M Ali's English Literature Notes

D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, besides having been analyzed for its complex psychological relationship and autobiographical elements, mainly stresses on a social aspect: class consciousness, social and monetary aspirations and the quest for upward mobility seemed to be very much on the minds of Lawrence and his fictional characters, much as these priorities dominate thinking in contemporary America . Lawrence ’s significant parallels between characters and narrative techniques, as Helen Baron in his introduction to Sons and Lovers states, “Powerfully intensify the characters’ consciousness of each other and of their surroundings.”(p.xv)         Gertrude bears a strong class-consciousness in her. She had a relationship with John, a man of her same class with much property, but he betrayed her by marrying a woman of forty for property. However, she finds in Walter Morel something different that she could not find in her previously known persons; and a str...